Saturday, August 1, 2009

Here are all the companies I have finished based and grassed. Each militia bn had 6 companies If I am not mistaken, just 2 to go. unfortunately I don't have them so I'll start work on the Belgian 7th line for now.

the picture in the background is from Waterloo. I took It 12 years ago. It is looking from the French lines at the position that the Dutch held early in the battle. it would have been on the forward slope just to the left of the copse of woods.

I will start trying to model part of the attack on La Haie Sainte by I corps. and I will start with the much maligned, I think falsely Dutch-Belgians.

First half of the first bn of dutch militia is done. all figures are Perry miniatures and I have reverted to layer painting for this period. which means it will be slow. I try to get new ideas for painting by reading the blogs of other painters. One of the best is Der alter Fritz. He turns out what to me seem like huge numbers of figures all well painted. whats the secret? In one of his blogs he noted that he paints for 1 hour a night every night an a 3-4 hours on saturday. heck, I can do that! so lets se how that works for me. Thanks Fritz for the idea.

This bn is the Dutch 7th militia bn of Biljandt's brigade. and while it didn't perform that great at Waterloo, the Brigade was an isolated force that met the initial attack of D'Erlon almost by itself. It had performed quite well at Quarte Bras for militia, and between the 2 battles the brigade lost 43% of its strength. That's quite respectable for any force, let alone militia. I think if properly deployed would have done much better than they are given credit for.

I have finally tired of painting mainly brown. I need some color. So I have embarked on yet another period. Napoleonics! Waterloo to be precise. This has long bit a period I Have wanted to do and with the great Perry plastics the time is right to jump into it in a big way. Well here's to making the plunge.

first I have purchased and read (minor miracle)the rules General do brigade by David Brown. Numerous reviews on the web talk to the excellent of these rules and I Have to concur. Well written with 48 pages in the core rules, I felt overwhelmed and thought I would never remember the concepts (long gone are the days when I would read 100 pages of rules in a night and play the game the next day). But the concepts are remarkably streamline and logical and elegant, if I can use that word. I will reread them week and play test sections of the rules, so we will see how they translate to the table, Well done. They are designed for the large battalion, 24-36 figure BN's are the norm and I want a large scale feel. Waterloo is the quintessential Napoleonic battle and I want to scale it right. Obviously I will be going for parts of the battle on this scale and trying to game in small parts rather than the whole enchilada.